Business Communications Transformation Is Happening With or Without Our "Buy In"

Reflecting on the cosmic smack that shocked us awake from our deep slumber when Covid hit in March of 2021,  we would have to live on the moon not to know the world of business communications has forever changed. 

Business leaders and the teams of sales, marketing, subject matter experts, and executives charged with hitting the numbers are all in different states of awareness, from outright denial to a vague sense that something is not quite right about what used to work in the past. 

The Threat Is Real, And So Is Our Fear Of The Unknown 

Suddenly it seemed that no one was in their office, and they never answered their phones. Or, if we send an email, it feels like our message is going into a black hole that will never see the light of day because it almost always doesn't.

Or, how about those cold messages we get on LinkedIn where we are welcomed not so warmly with an automated sales pitch the second we connect? Raise your hand if you respond to these brutal sell tactics, especially on InMail. You will likely find the communication to be intrusive, low value, and emotionally barren. 

Missing What Wasn't Working In The First Place

Meanwhile, networking events aren't delivering meaningful connections because there aren't as many events, and how much do we really miss them anyway? 

They are essentially an exercise in corporate speed dating, with everyone walking around flashing business cards, ratting off their rote elevator pitches, and trying to establish subject matter expertise in a room full of subject matter experts, usually with conflicting agendas. 

So where does that leave those of us who are in the business of communicating with other businesspeople who don't want to engage in the same way they did only two years ago when they occasionally entertained our forward advances with vague to mild interest? 

The New Elevator Pitch Is Our Brand's Origin Story

Our valid business reasons and slick closing techniques like using reverse psychology or "strip lining" a prospect who is "on the hook" as we're trying to reel them in like a swordfish is straight out of the Death of A Salesman 21st Century edition. 

The cost to us for not quickly adapting and evolving our communication methods could be crippling. The symptoms include declining sales volume, slower time to market for product launches, bottlenecks on valuable strategic alliances, disengaged clients vulnerable to poaching, and employees "quietly quitting." Yet, at the same time, they hide in their living rooms, pretending to be present during mindless Zoom calls. 

Email and Phone Calls Have Been Replaced with Audio and Video

The transformation is sweeping, permanent, and moving forward with relentless velocity. As a result, people want to work with brands that resonate emotionally. 

People want more authentic and personable communications, including podcasts, vlogs, blogs, digital publications, executive roundtables, and educational branded entertainment.   

A Solution Looking For A Problem

People don't buy features and benefits. They buy to avoid pain and solve significant problems that impact them personally and professionally. No one is ready to hear about our solutions until they acknowledge they have a problem. We know how that goes. If all you have is a hammer, everyone looks like a nail. 

The pace of technology-driven innovation doesn't leave us much time to ponder the correct theory on the new way of communicating in business. A case in point is the Remarkable digital writing tablet. The product was developed by people who thought they would thrive by filling a perceived need for a "faster horse." 

Essentially, it provides an incremental improvement to other digital writing tablets by offering a different surface that feels and sounds like actual paper. It allows users to create digital files and sync them to the cloud for an additional recurring monthly fee,  

But many of us quickly discovered that these folders and files became another digital junk drawer like all the other files and folders we have on five or ten different devices. 

Instead of replacing the chaos of handwritten notes, it gave us one dedicated writing tablet and 150 notebooks we couldn't keep track of in one writing tablet. Sure, we can sync articles we find on our laptop or desktop to the writing tablet and mark them up with a digital yellow highlighter on the tablet. 

Artificial Intelligence Changes How We Communicate

But that just leaves the equivalent of a pile of newspapers and magazines on this dedicated device that doesn't do anything with artificial intelligence to help us manage the information overload. And we never get back to it. So instead, we just hoard the information or purge it later, just like with physical publications. 

Once we discovered Otter.ai with real-time transcription services on every device and synced to the cloud, the idea of taking handwritten notes felt like an unnecessary burden. Now that's not a faster horse. It's a Mazzeratti. 

Ironically, the marketing hype around Remarkable has been fueled by the assertion that getting out from behind the computer screen frees us up to build deeper connections with the people around us. 

Rhetorical Question That Wins The Closing Argument

How does frantically scribbling copious notes help us actively listen with compassion, empathy, and undivided focus on assisting people in solving problems, alleviating pain, and achieving their desired outcomes? 

The case study here might seem trivial until we consider its implications. Artificial intelligence is freeing us from busy work and helping us see non-linear connections faster, giving us time to communicate better. It does the opposite of making us robots. Instead, it gives us more time to be human.

Andrew Ellenberg is President & Managing Partner Of Rise Integrated, an innovative studio that creates, produces, and distributes original multimedia content across digital touchpoints. To submit story ideas or inquire about custom multimedia publishing syndication and Content As A Service for Web3, email andrewe@riseintegrated.com or call 816-506-1257. Read more of his work in Forbes.